Role of African Elites in Dismantling Decolonization

Colonial literature F-K Omoregie, English Department, University of Botswana Walter Rodney s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Amilcar Cabral s National Liberation and Struggle, and Ngugi Wa Thiong o s Writing Against Neocolonialism reveal the political, economic, and social circumstances that formed the sensibility of most African writers. Thus, they illuminate the various types of mentalities or ideologies that inform African literature. In addition, these works help the reader determine if a novelist s portrayal of African society fully reflects its social relations, political arrangements, and economic factors. These critical writings also help in the debate on the definition of African literature. For they bring out the†¦show more content†¦. . (1980). In Ferdinand Oyono s The Old Man and the Medal, the road, constructed by forced black labor, symbolizes the visible exploitative means linking Africa to Europe. Rodney notes also that the social services in colonial Africa reflected the pattern of domination and exploitation geared toward the wel l-being of the settlers. In Mayombe the narrator says: You earn twenty escudos a day, for chopping down trees with an axe . . . And how much does the boss earn for each tree? A pile. What does the boss do to earn this money? Nothing, nothing . . . So, how can he earn many thousands a day and give you twenty escudos? What right has he? This is colonialist exploitation. [Pepetela: 1983: 19] What the narrator notes above, claims Rodney, is what resulted in the underdevelopment of Africa. Rodney observes that the African dependency upon the European also ultimately produced neocolonial class stratification and Africans who manipulated the colonial economic structures for their own benefit. In Mission to Kala, the colonial authorities nominate the chief of Vimili who goes on to live an opulent life at the expense of the people: The colonial Administration (who had nominated him in the first place) buttered him up. In return, he obeyed their commands like a robot and knew they would not throw him out. In the days of the forced labor gangs he had been feared by everyone because he betrayed fugitives to the authorities and acted as an informer.Show MoreRelated Outside the Teaching Machine by Gayatri Spivak2753 Words   |  11 Pagesâ€Å"Other† as self’s other is going on, perhaps with more subtlety and programmatic finesse. The significant distinction she makes between relative strength of subjectivity is the way how she considers the Western critical discourse as assuming the role of the originator, legitimizer, and of course the guarantor of the discourse about the so-called Third World. The ethical question that arises from Spivak’s discussion leads towards what she terms â€Å"epistemic violence.† For her, the Western subject’sRead MoreCultural Erasure5591 Words   |  23 Pagescity of El Dorado, the fabled Fountain of Youth and the island home of Robinson Crusoe. Enriched by the process of creolization, the cosmopolitanism of the average Caribbean person is also well recognized: ‘No Indian from India, no European, no African can adjust with greater ease and naturalness to new situations’ (Lamming 1960, 34). As a concept or notion ‘the Caribbean’ can also be seen to have a marvellous elasticity that defies the imposition of clear geographic boundaries, has no distinctRead MoreOne Significant Change That Has Occurred in the World Between 1900 and 2005. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change.163893 Words   |  656 Pagestwentieth century as a coherent unit for teaching, as well as for written narrative and analysis. Though they do not exhaust the crucial strands of historical development that tie the century together—one could add, for example, nationalism and decolonization—they cover in depth the defining phenomena of that epoch, which, as the essays demonstrate, very often connect in important ways with these and other major developments. The opening essays of this collection underscore the importance of including